You should have listened

[bore]

Roughly a year ago today, my active atlasia career ended after consecutively serving in the northeast assembly, in the senate and then as president. It was a long and illustrious career, and, at the end of it all I was happy to retire as an elder statesman with no regrets.

My second term as president coincided with a crisis of inactivity, with offices vital to the running of the state becoming impossible to fill, the senate being barely active and the regions mere husks. It was only through my strong leadership, neither resigning and abandoning the game or endorsing the approach of conservatives who wished merely to tinker around with the deck chairs, that brought about a concon, which, while perhaps going on for too long, did bring about the restructuring and rebooting that was necessary.

Now it has come to my attention that a cabal of individuals, perhaps jealous of this proud legacy, have spent the last year constantly undermining and attacking me as a weak and failed president, who single handedly drove atlasia onto the rocks. It goes without saying that the most longwinded of these individuals is the esteemed Supreme Court Judge Yankee.

Ironically it turns out that the very people who have spent the last year talking about the importance of doing things by the book, who have defamed my legacy and the legacy of all those who pushed for game reform in those dark days, are, unsurprisingly, complete hypocrites, shamelessly ignoring the very same rules simply to win an election.

Well something much important is at stake here than who controls the presidency for the next few months. At stake is the very future of atlasia as a democracy. While I believe that yankee should have been rejected for his mendacious slander about the past I have referred to above, reasonable people can disagree. It is now clear, however, that reasonable people can no longer disagree, and that yankee must be rejected due to his contempt for the democratic system.

Speaking as your former president, my conscience would not be clean if I did not try to warn you that all people of good will must condemn this brazen attempt at a coup.

[bore]

So much revisionism, so little time:

Snip.

Well there are two things to deal with here. Firstly I have no interest in how the people rank my tenure. People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. People are often wrong. It is the facts which concern me.

And, moving onto the facts, though certain people try to deny them, are clear. Before my call for radical reform on July 18th 2015, the Constitutional Convention petition thread had been nigh on abandoned. After, the terms of debate completely shifted, and we got our ConCon. The facts simply speak for themselves.

Snip

I have always been nothing more and nothing less than my own man. When people like Nix, who I deeply respect, resigned, I could have gone with them, but didn't.  Similarly an ally like Adam can confirm that trying to whip me always fail. I have no more elections to run for, so I am not trying to impress people with my maverick status. It's just that ranting about various other people has little connection to the issue at hand.

And, maybe this is only clear to those who have been outside the atlasian bubble for a while, but there are no words for your running mate disqualifying perfectly valid votes to win you the election other than corruption and treachery.

Are you serious?

In the final phase of your term, you were deeply inactive, with just the Senate being active in the government. Also your approval ratings were something like 10%

This is blatantly untrue, and the fact that it has become accepted history is deeply disturbing. The senate was to all intents and purposes, a zombie institution in the last three months of my term, from the beginning of August to the beginning November, there were 14 acts voted on by the senate. Most of those attracting a smattering of comment. In the month of october the senate expelled 2 of its members and passed 3 laws, attracting a total of 164 posts between all 3.

[bore]

There is no way that attacking a candidate in the voting booth is not campaigning by any traditional definition. You can spin it, you can dive into any kind of historical examples that you want. But it is what it is and the law states that it is grounds for invalidation.

I would point out that Rpryor knocked off several of my voters too, two of which are being sued over as well. Why? Because the law either rightly or wrongly interpreted motivated those actions.

I don't think I should have to point this out to a Supreme Court Justice, but if laws were as obvious as you think they are, you'd be out of a job.

The terms of the debate were not shifted because of your statements. They were shifted by the mass exodus of players that occurred over the course of that July, leading to myself and others like PiT embracing consolidation as the only viable path forward.

Your statement was regarding as neigh on embrace of dissolution, which the embrace of the Con-Con by various conservative elements was aimed at stopping.

It's pretty clear that the signatures to the ConCon started happening again at almost straight after my speech. And yes maybe that was because I moved the terms of debate, forcing the right out of its hidebound moderate reform dogma. I make no apologies for that. Although if you'd read the statement and my other ones it would be pretty clear that I regarded dissolution and a successful ConCon as largely the same thing.

The problem is that bore simply threw the towel when any sign of activity from the top would be of great importance. He didn't cross the line like Nix, but the fact remains he gave up.

Even before the crisis bore was pretty much a lackluster President. When I was the GM I a had very hard time to get him to react to anything (Lumine was very cooperative).

Interesting that you've neglected to mention that your time as GM came to an ignominious end as you were forced by the overwhelming weight of public opinion to resign as GM because you nuked atlasia.

[bore]

You didn't move the terms of the debate on the right, bore. Sawx's ban did more to move the debate among us than you did.

My speech was on the 18th, you signed it on the 18th, Sawx was banned on the 22nd. Nice try.

Fmr. President James Buchanan OldPublicFunctionary      YaBB God ★★★★★ Posts: 6168

Re: BREAKING: Lee's Army Surrenders at Appomattox « on: April 9, 1865, 11:23:47 pm » My last months as president coincided with a secession crisis, with state after state announcing her departure from the union, the congress hopelessly divided, and the army a mere husk. It was only through my strong leadership, neither resigning and abandoning the union nor endorsing the approach of black Republicans who wished merely to play coy and ignore the impending rupture of our family of states, that brought about a successful war strategy which, while perhaps going on for too long, did bring about the reunion that was necessary.

Completely inaccurate, obviously, but I have to admit this is quite funny. Most obviously, the crisis as it started was nothing to do with me but to do with a game wide dissatisfaction with atlasia as it existed. And yes, my approach was the correct one by any objective standard. I fulfilled all that was required of me. I never failed to sign or veto any of the few bills the senate sent me, I made appointments and I even engaged with the senate more than most senators did. In other words I allowed the game to stumble on, but I did not try and give the illusion that all was well and try and paper over the severe structural flaws by proposing new laws which would have been wiped out in a few months or spend hours trying to find a SoEA or SoIA who would just resign in frustration a wee later.

Unlike you I took full responsibility for the fiasco.

What is interesting that I've devised that ultimately failed scenario as a way to actually get the likes of you to react. Unsurprisingly to no avail.

So yes, I did mishandle this, but at least I did something.

Is that interesting? I don't really think so.

I'm not going to pretend and never have that I enjoyed engaging with GM storylines much, like most people in the game at best I used them as sticks to beat my opponent with because they didn't respond to them. But of course this was highly hypocritical. That's politics. But I guess I'm sorry that I didn't take storylines such as atlasia being in the throes of a rebellion led by Bushie and Lebron as seriously as they deserved.

At least Kalwejt acted, and as GM he always worked to make the game more interesting and more interactive. His legacy as an officeholder (and particularly as GM) is far more accomplished than this revisionist active and strong presidency which apparently existed during 2015, even if we can find countless statements of respected Atlasians of different sides who openly defined the period the other way around.

Your call for radical reform was admittedly more reasonable than that of those who wished for the game to suddenly cease its existence, but you are on record stating that a Con Con was impossible at one moment and that we might as well leave everything to burn down. To make matters worse, that was right at the moment in which we had an actual revolution and the Attorney General appointed by the Administration committing treason. What we needed was firm, assertive leadership from the White House, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't what we had (which was voiced again and again from people from virtually all sides).

And if we want to debate only of facts, we can note that the opinion polls and public debate consistently showcased disappointment on the administration, that respected cabinet ministers resigned in protest of this, that even people deeply supportive of Labor like Windjammer did call for your resignation and that very little got actually done or said by the White House in those two terms.

I'm somewhat bemused by this idea that if only I had appointed some people (and, let us be clear, no one wanted those jobs) to some unworkable jobs, or written a statement condemning violence, then everything would have been ok and we would have returned to a land of milk and honey.

Using the term strong presidency which I did not, is misleading. I said strong leadership, which is not the same thing. I showed strong leadership by not exercising a strong presidency during the crisis, by not issuing paper decrees and stirring speeches when that was the politically popular thing to do.

Personally my feeling is that the animosity towards my presidency, and I don't doubt that it exists from, as you have pointed out, the establishment of the time, across the spectrum, is based on the fact that I didn't pretend that everything was ok at the time. And by acknowledging this truth I was directly implicating that very same establishment for killing the game, which of course they can not handle. Now I don't think it's intentional, clearly not. Yankee for instance is clearly committed to the game. But the establishment was angered by the implication that by blocking nearly every reform of consequence (of course individually many of them did support one reform but not others, but collectively nothing could happen), had stifled the game to death. No one wants to be accused of killing a thing they love. And the natural reaction is to pretend that everything was fine in the lead up to the crisis, until big nasty bore and the evil IRC tried to kill it. But it simply isn't true.

[bore]

Notice I said, "move the discussion on the right", not change my vote personally.


There was still reluctance after I signed, bore and the mass loss of players from Sawx, to Adam to Snowguy from bans and deregistrations, help push them to try the Con-con.

The petition was signed before sawx's banning but after my speech by you, jomcar, cinyc, poirot and adam. That's 4 (at the time) very active right wingers and the labor power broker. After the 22nd july but before the 1st of august it was signed by, timturner, marokai, flo, dereich, tony v, texasgurl, clarkkent, newcanadaland, badger, anoton kreitzer, peeperkorn, sanchez and gass.

Of those 4 can be counted as right wingers, with dereich being the only one who was active in the game at the time. The rest were the result of the labor machine swinging behind getting people to sign the petition and were mainly, to put it charitably, zombies. I'm sorry, yankee, but the facts simply do not bear your theory here out.

[bore]

Bore, nobody pretended that "everything was OK". The difference was between those who wanted to throw everything away without even trying to lift their fingers, like you, and those who acted.

Not true. At all, actually. In my many terms in the senate I backed pretty much every major reform going, only for every single one, including objectively sensible and minor ones like giving the SOFE the power to hold votes on amendments instead of unreliable governors, to be blocked by mindless reactionaries. In my first term as president I spent pretty much all of my political capital on a big piece of electoral reform, only to have it torpedoed by the labor machine. I signed the petition for a ConCon weeks before my speech, with the only result being radio silence. I did everything within the structures of the game possible to push for change, with nothing happening. Given that threatening to throw everything away was the only thing that provoked the reactionaries into accepting radical change then I'm not going to apologise for doing so.

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Perhaps. Although, as I noted, I'm far from alone in that view. I think a GM can be useful, although such a role should be limited. The thing is there's no fun, and actually it's the height of blandness, in dealing with something like a terrorist attack (write a speech saying you condemn the attackers and will support the victims, say we won't be afraid because the terrorists would have won, forget about it in a week), and there's no fun in dealing with an objectively implausible situation like Bushie leading a rebellion against the government.

[bore]

We've got some delusion of grandeur here. People have been aware and vocal on the need of game reform long before you became President. Suggesting that your actions, or rather lack of action, was a deciding factor here is... interesting.

Restart had been accomplished under Griffin, who unlike you never abdicated his responsibilities as President. It's naive to think "bah, reset, everything's solved now" way was of any use.

Well yes. That's true, and I've never claimed otherwise. Pretty much every game reform had the support of a majority (hence all of them passing the senate) of atlasians and probably a supermajority of active ones. What did happen, on every single one of them though, was that there were reactionaries who blocked the changes, not always the same, (although, as noted, some like zuwo were the same) but always enough, combined with the terrible system, to block any change.

Well, I've been receiving more positive notes than negative on my overall tenure as GM and a lot of people were getting involved thanks to various developments, so you certainly can't claim Atlasians views it as bland or useless.

OK, forget terrorist stuff for a moment. What about diplomatic problems with other countries? You've ignored it entirely. Whether you like the idea of GM or not, the law provides for the game engine and President can't just ignore it. You're free to push for the abolition of the game engine, but until then it's just immature to be like "oh, this is part of the rules I don't like, let's ignore it."

Last, but not least, I firmly believe that one of the reasons South American experiment had failed is because you have no game engine whatsoever. All you managed was to repeat all of Atlasia's mistakes.

I'm not at all surprised that people claim to view the GM office positively. In fact I've already said that, repeatedly, up thread.  But of course people claim to do so. As I said, it's one of the best sticks for beating your opponent over the head with. No one really decides their votes on it though, it's just a rhetorical device. And as soon as they reach the position of actually engaging with the office in a meaningful way, most people come around to the view that the office is unworkable. Most GMs do, which is why there is such a high turnover. The problem is no one ever believes that something is so because the GM says so. Hence Adam's aliens storyline, or the terrorist attacks, or whatever. In all those cases the public simply don't believe him. Hell, who really believes that atlasia has run surpluses for the last 12 years? The GM, if he is to believed has to say things everyone already knows, and if he doesn't, no one believes him.

And the thing is atlasia is primarily an elections game and only secondarily a government one. If the president wants to ignore the GM he can. Maybe not de jure but certainly de facto. If the public disagree they'll not re elect him or his party. But, funnily enough, that doesn't happen.

Prior to the massive number of deregistrations, consolidation was still viewed with hostility, and many thought a convention would fail to achieve anything. Even among those who signed it, many were still opposed to consolidation, which was of course the primary expected proposal at a convention. Perhaps that is what is causing our different interpretation of events with regards to support on the right. The massive loss of players finally encouraged those who had long opposed consolidation to realize it was only answer at that point.

I would also point out that I purposely delayed signing by a week because I was worried that the minute I signed the petition, it would be attacked as "Yankee's little scheme to preserve the status quo" by the dissolution, which was already being tossed around. Avoiding signing it gave the con-con some distance until those critics began to depart.

Your second paragraph is convenient, maybe it's true. I don't know so I can't deal with it.

And the first one isn't really a matter of disagreement. I obviously wouldn't have made the speech if there hadn't been a spate of deregistrations and inactivity. They were the inevitable outcome of that incarnation of the game running it's course, but if it had happened in the term after me I would have kept on going, obviously. The president obviously doesn't have the power to announce there is a crisis and have everyone believe him. The crisis was very very real. But I certainly think it's the case, and the negative reviews from the usual suspects of my tenure confirm, that if I had tried to polish the turd, if I had unleashed a flurry of executive orders and pmed everyone in the game and dragged together a cabinet, at least in name only, then the game would have held together for a bit long, staggering on. And I think that is a real contradiction. You can't say that on the one hand I didn't lead enough, and on the other that of course the crisis was real and overwhelming and nothing I did changed its course, and the ConCon would have happened anyway. If I had been more active on a conventional level in my last few months I think the ConCon would not have happened. And I think that would be a tragedy for the game.